


A Cacophony of Cormorants

by plutosrose



Category: Captain America (Movies), Knives Out (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Developing Relationship, Flirting, M/M, Pining, mystery novels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25436140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: Steve's a fan of Harlan Thrombey's mystery novels. As Bucky recovers, he reads them aloud to him. Then #CaptainRansom starts trending on Twitter.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 79





	A Cacophony of Cormorants

Living in Washington, DC wasn’t too bad. Sometimes when he squinted, parts of it even looked like Brooklyn. He went for runs every morning, winding down from his apartment in DuPont Circle to the waterfront in Georgetown and over past the monuments. Sometimes he even went for runs with Sam (he pointed out that it was really a light jog and not a run until Sam said he’d push him into the Potomac).

He dodged the dates that Nat tried to set him up (really, he’d noticed Lillian’s lip piercing the first time he’d met her and figured he’d just stare the entire time if they went out for coffee, so it was better to just drop it entirely). 

Aside from missions, he spent a lot of time in his apartment, listening to the records that Nat had helped him track down, and reading. 

Sure, television and the internet were fun (and for a long, long time Steve had amused himself by typing whatever he could think of into the search bar on his laptop). But they didn’t absorb him for hours like a good book did.

Honestly, it had all started the day he’d walked past the bookstore near his apartment and seen a poster in the window advertising the latest Harlan Thrombey mystery novel, _The Menagerie Tragedy, Book 3: A Cacophony of Cormorants._

The poster was of a large and menacing-looking bird spreading its wings straight through the title font. And Steve, who hadn’t drawn in way, way too long, appreciated the colors that the artist used on the bird’s wings enough to walk into the bookstore.

Within a few days, he’d finished the entire Menagerie Tragedy trilogy, finished _A Thousand Knives_ (he really hadn’t seen the bit with the shotgun and the cow coming, it was impressive, and gone back to the bookstore to see if he could find more novels. 

At first, he wasn’t even sure why he liked them. He spent a lot of time in real life chasing bad guys, and reading about bad guys in books shouldn’t have been that entertaining. But, he reasoned, reading about someone else chasing the bad guy was much more interesting and fun than chasing the bad guy in real life.

And, to be honest, he kind of liked the fact that there were no television adaptations. None! And there were television adaptations for absolutely _everything_. It was extremely gratifying to reference, for example, the gardener’s parting words in _The Russian Princess_ (the book that had come out when he was in the hospital and had been part of a very well-put-together gift basket from Natasha) and force Sam to admit that he had no idea what he was talking about. 

-

Even though he tore his way through every Harlan Thrombey book that he got his hands on, there were times that he wasn’t able to do much reading. One world-ending disaster after another, for example, made it hard to find time to sit back and relax with a book. 

Then there was Bucky and Bucky’s recovery and a move to the Tower. He was certain that he hadn’t read anything longer than a grocery list for months. It was sleepless nights upon sleepless nights in the Tower, hoping and praying that even if Bucky never remembered James Buchanan Barnes, that he could at least flush The Winter Soldier out of his head.

But soon - which was a relative term, he supposed, because when you’d technically been alive for a century, you could measure time in decades instead of moments, things were normal. No aliens had tried to blow up the Earth in a while, and one day, Bucky started doing better, and then the next, even better than that. 

Steve couldn’t remember the exact day that it had started, but Bucky had woken up one night with a particularly bad nightmare, and crawled under the covers with him the way he had in their Brooklyn walk-up. And then he just..didn’t stop.

And Steve had to admit to himself, at least, that this closeness was the best, and most reassuring thing that he’d had since he came out of the ice. There were times when Bucky would drift off to sleep that he would focus on holding him, memorizing his face, his warmth, everything. Bucky was here, Bucky was alive. He was okay.

The world was okay and Bucky Barnes was okay.

-

The best nights, Steve decided, were the ones where they stayed up late together, Bucky resting his head in his lap as he read to him. At first, he was a bit hesitant when Bucky had picked out the Harlan Thrombey novels that he kept in a neat row on his bookshelf. (“Are you going to just read gardening catalogues to me instead? I can tell you if it’s too much.”)

Bucky usually fell asleep thirty minutes in, but that didn’t matter. 

“What’s that new one you got? _The Killing Face_?”

“No, we already read that one, remember?” It was hard to ignore the way that his heart would clench in his chest every time he said the word ‘remember,’ even if it was about something as insignificant as the plot to a book. “That scene at the clock tower with the banker’s wife?”

“Right, right,” Bucky murmured as he closed his eyes. Cautiously, Steve reached out and ran his fingers through his hair. 

“It’s _The Swordsman’s Kiss_. It’s supposed to be really good,” Steve explained as he carefully opened the book. He did not admit that he’d spent several hours pouring over articles about the book. Not only did it feature Harlan’s first openly LGBTQ character, it was now the second-to-last book that Harlan would ever write, since he had recently died. _The Lost Ones_ , due out in approximately six months, would be the last one, which was disappointing and sad. Steve decided to put off reading that one as long as possible. 

He’d just gotten to the part - referenced repeatedly in online articles - where the main character - a soldier and former detective in Italy - decided that he was going to solve the murder of his best friend’s sister. Even though he was bright red reading a sex scene between the soldier and his best friend (he honestly thought he might choke when he read the phrase ‘his hand slid against the bulge in his pants), he snuck glances at Bucky’s face, which as always, was hard to read (“I like the stories, but I mostly like hearing your voice, Stevie.”) because he liked to close his eyes and let the words wash over him. 

When he noticed that Bucky was definitely asleep and not just lying there with his eyes closed, he cautiously pressed a kiss to Bucky’s temple and nudged him over to his side of the bed.

He missed the small smile on his face. 

-

When Steve opened his eyes, he looked over and noticed that it was about half an hour past when he normally got out of bed. “Fuck,” he murmured. Since Bucky had begun sleeping in the same bed as him, he’d gotten in the habit of turning off the alarm clock in his sleep. 

Usually, Bucky was still asleep, curled up against him. But when Steve reached for him, he wasn’t there.

Immediately, his heart began to pick up in his chest. He got dressed as fast as was humanly possible (which fortunately, was a great deal faster than it was for most people), and threw open the door - 

Only to see that Bucky and Sam were sitting on the couch. Both perfectly fine. 

“Morning sleepyhead,” Bucky called over to Steve, teasing smirk betraying just how much he was enjoying the fact that he’d woken up before him for once. “Sam’s been here for like twenty minutes. Where have you been?”

He glanced over at Sam, who was dressed in workout clothes. “Shit, I’m sorry, Sam, I completely forgot. I’ll go get changed now and we can go.” 

Steve was about to turn and walk back down the hall when his gaze flicked over to the television, which had the news on at a low volume. The crawl at the bottom of the screen read, ‘Ransom Drysdale Arrested in Mystery Author Murder Caper.’ 

And although Steve had wrinkled his nose at the title, he reached over to the remote on the table to turn on the volume.

On screen, a blonde woman with impossibly sleek hair came into view, standing in front of the country mansion that Steve had grown accustomed to seeing on the back of his books.

“We bring you live to Harlan Thrombey’s former residence, where his grandson Ransom Drysdale was just arrested in connection with the death of Thrombey’s housekeeper, Frances Callahan. We are also told that he is being charged with assaulting Marta Cabrera, Thrombey’s nurse and sole heir. Cabrera made news last week when it was revealed that Thrombey had left his entire publishing empire to her. This story is continuing to develop. Back to you, Thomas.” 

Bucky blinked at the television. “He looks a _lot_ like you.”

Steve scoffed. “No he doesn’t. We look completely different.”

“If by different, you mean ‘identical twin,’ then yeah, you look completely different,” Sam said from his position on the couch. 

“He’s kinda hot,” Bucky said suddenly, which made Steve’s eyes widen. The smile that Bucky flashed in his direction was so reminiscent of the ones in his memories and dreams that it took him several seconds to blink again. 

Sam checked his phone, “Oh, it’s apparently trending on Twitter.”

“It’s what?” Steve stopped in his tracks. He’d gotten a Twitter account a few months ago, but he’d never really bothered to use it. 

Sam held out his phone so Steve could see the little hashtag on the side. _#CaptainRansom_

He scoffed again as Sam had pulled his phone away. He only had it back for a moment before Bucky snatched it out of his hands and started to scroll through it. “You could have at least asked first,” Sam snapped, and Bucky shrugged.

“Wow, they’re comparing some photos of him in….Aruba to pictures of you at Brooklyn Beach. How come we haven’t been to the beach, Stevie?” 

A blush crept up Steve’s neck as he took a few steps back. The tilt in Bucky’s jaw was way too reminiscent of the way another Bucky would curve his lips and tease the girls in their neighborhood until he was out all night and Steve was left frantically jerking off in their apartment, hoping he’d finish before Bucky came home again. It would always get him so fucking _hard_ \--Christ, he couldn’t think about this now.

“I’m going to go change. Let’s go for that run,” Steve nodded. 

When Steve went back to his room, Sam snatched the phone back from Bucky and hissed, “Get your own, Barnes.” 

-

Later, as he kept a leisurely pace beside Sam, who was breathing increasingly hard on their laps around the reservoir in Central Park, he repeatedly turned over that phrase in his head.

_He’s kinda hot._

Christ, he was not going to be able to let that go.

**Author's Note:**

> Aside from The Menagerie Tragedy (subtitle, mine), and A Thousand Knives, the other titles were of my own invention.


End file.
